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June 6, 2012

Value Picks

First, Third, and DH for 6/6/12

by Michael Street

Fantasy prognostication is not a perfect science, but my Value Picks have been solid, graduating six players in seven weeks, including top performers like Adam LaRoche, Chris Davis, and Will Middlebrooks. Along the way, I’ve made some bad calls too, of course, largely on single-league players like Brad Eldred and Conor Gillaspie. This week features one of both kinds—a promotion and a demotion—along with the usual crop of strong performers available on at least 80 percent of most leagues’ waiver wires.

Departures
Justin Smoak (Yahoo! 23%, ESPN 19%, CBS 55%) indeed caught fire last week, hitting .409/.567/.864 in 30 plate appearances, including two home runs in Wednesday’s 21-8 football game against the Rangers. He had three straight multi-hit games and added 141 points to his SLG and 31 points to his batting average since May 23, and his overall triple-slash of .240/.300/.408 sits just above his 60th percentile PECOTA in all but OBP. That makes the seven walks in his past 30 plate appearances look even better, since it took 145 plate appearances to register his previous seven. Whether that’s real patience or pitchers being more careful with him, his OBP could begin to rise too. But you’ve got him for his power, which would easily surpass PECOTA’s 90th percentile of .434 if he’s found his stroke.

My bad. I figured Bob Melvin would take leather over wood in his first-base dilemma, but he went with Kila Ka’aihue (Yahoo! 1%, ESPN 0%, CBS 3%) over Daric Barton (Yahoo! 0%, ESPN 0%, CBS 1%). The A’s demoted Barton Saturday, giving first base to the Kila Monster and leaving me with egg on my face.

Arrivals
Lonnie “Kids in the” Chisenhall (Yahoo! 5%, ESPN 5%, CBS 21%) has been a VP before, and I mentioned in Playing Pepper about a month ago that he’d be up when Jack Hannahan (who evidently has no nickname) cooled off. Well, Hannahan has cooled off, although it took an ice pack to do it: he ended up on the DL with a strained calf last week, and Cleveland called up Chisenhall, their once and future third baseman, to replace him.

Chisenhall has done more than just replace Hannahan’s more-than-adequate .276/.353/.419 line at the hot corner. He homered as part of his two-hit return to action on Tuesday, then clubbed another on Friday, and he currently owns a .333/.333/.667 triple-slash line. Both of those homers came at home, a good indication that the power expected from him should continue, although HitTracker indicates that wind helped Friday’s 426-foot jack travel an extra 52 feet.

As BP 2012 points out, Cleveland fans debated last season whether Chisenhall or Jason Kipnis was the team’s top prospect, and Kipnis won the argument on the field, hitting .272/.333/.507 against Chisenhall’s .255/.284/.415. The third baseman’s plate approach had much to do with his lack of dominance, as he whiffed 22 percent of the time while walking in just 3.6 percent of his plate appearances. The problem wasn’t the way he attacked strikes, swinging at 69 percent of them and making contact with 90 percent. It was his inability to lay off balls that hurt him; his 42.3 swing rate on pitches outside the zone would have ranked him in the top ten in MLB had he qualified.